


Counting Down: Shorts

by loveluckylost



Series: Counting Down [2]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Bonus Material, Gem War, Gen, Immortality, Little bit of angst, Omake, Recreational Drug Use, Shorts, Survival, Time Travel, Vignette, Wandering the Earth, pink connie, platonic friendship, they are bros, time displacement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:29:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23568373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveluckylost/pseuds/loveluckylost
Summary: This is a collection of shorts based on ideas that had to be cut from the main work for whatever reason.It is worthwhile to have read Counting Down before reading this, because this work will reference it directly and often.
Relationships: Lars Barriga & Connie Maheswaran
Series: Counting Down [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1696372
Comments: 22
Kudos: 86





	1. Power.

**Author's Note:**

> This is set mere weeks after the end of Counting Down: Chapter 6. The Moments.

# 1\. Power.

~*~

Connie drew a breath and eyed the restless ocean sprawling away from her. The sky above was partially cloudy but the salty seabreeze was light. Although it was all very beautiful, she glared in contempt at what lay before her.

There, on the cliff’s edge, she braced herself. And when she knew in her heart that the wind was right and the stars were aligned, it ripped from her lungs with explosive fury.

Birds fluttered in panic through the canopy above, scrambling for flight as her scream rolled away on the breeze. She narrowed her eyes at the empty space in front of her where a portal should have been.

Her face fell in disappointment. It didn’t work - _again!_ She snapped her head back to regard her cohort.

Lars was sitting on the upturned canoe further back away from the edge of the cliff. His arms were folded in front of him as he watched in a judgy way.

The firepit down at his feet was alight. She had no idea why, but couldn’t care about that right now as their eyes connected.

“What?” was all he asked, his eyebrows raised.

She turned the rest of herself to face him. Frustration was thick both on her features and in her voice. “Comments? Critique?” she asked right back.

“Hm. Well-” He actually tried to think of something positive to say, but couldn’t.

“That was _bad,_ Connie,” he said at last before focusing his attention back on the little meal cooking in front of him on the firepit. “ _Real_ bad. Like, you scared all those birds for no reason, you actual monster.”

She huffed impatiently. “You keep saying that when you could be helpful instead. Tell me what it is I’m doing wrong!” she demanded.

He spread his arms wide, just as exasperated. “I dunno, dude! Maybe you just, like, want it too bad?”

“ _I want it too-_ ” She scoffed. “Listen here, you. I want to be able to use my magical mojo _a healthy amount and nothing more_.”

Lars groaned loudly. “ _Connie._ You’re overthinking this. Can you just come and hang? Please? Your ‘magical _mojo’_ isn’t going anywhere.”

“Yeah,” she sulked. “Because I don’t have it.”

He couldn’t bring himself to believe any of this. Connie was acting so unlike herself that the intensity of his ensuing eyeroll almost made the inside of his head hurt. “Just give it time! Look, Lion had powers. I’ve got them. You do too.”

“I can’t even make my eyes glow,” she whined. “That’s like the least cool thing you do.” She wanted to keep going, but he cut her off.

“When I first got pinked, I didn’t even know I _had_ powers aside from the hair portal thing, and that couldn’t help me while I was stuck in space,” he explained.

“It’s been weeks!” she exclaimed with an emphatic wave of her arms. “How long did it take you before you did anything cool?”

He narrowed his eyes in thought. “Maybe a week,” he admitted at last, only to watch as Connie’s expression collapsed into despair yet again. “Stop! Don’t you dare,” he ordered. “Come sit!”

She wandered over and sat down in a huff next to him on the canoe. He immediately offered her a bowl of the food she was surprised to see he’d been cooking up. It was a fried fish with some vegetables in a neat little pile next to it with some fresh greens on top. Even though they’d been living off the land like this for around fourteen years now, Lars still cared about presentation.

But it didn’t matter. She moved her eyes from it up to his face in mild confusion. “Uh, I’m not hungry?”

He immediately shut his eyes and let his head flop back. “Fuuuuuck,” he groaned into the sky, slapping a hand to his face and clenching his teeth. “I _forgot._ ”

She became incredulous. “How did you forget!? I died and everything!”

“Yeah, but-”

Incredulity quickly became amusement. “You were there!”

He shrugged and held his hands out. “I know! It’s, it’s habit-”

“What? You haven’t cooked for me any other day since it happened!”

 _”Yeah_ but I-“

“You brought me to Rose Quartz!”

He winced at that one. “Don’t remind me.”

Connie smiled slyly in the short silence that followed. “She resurrected me?” she continued. “And now I’m pink? Is this ringing any bells?” She fondly pushed her arm into his. “Any at all?”

He snorted and gave her a push back. She fell off the upturned canoe and landed on her butt in the dirt.

“Aah, sorry-” he started. But to his surprise, she started laughing.

“Not funny!” It was now Lars’ turn to grump. “You realize this means I wrecked a perfectly good fish for _no reason._ ”

Connie stood up and brushed herself off. When she finished laughing, they decided to leave the meal out for the raccoons that they no longer needed to hunt. A while later, they sat watching a couple of the creatures fighting over the fish.

“Trash goblins,” said Connie.

“Garbage creatures,” Lars added.

It was nice to agree on something, even if it was just the general characteristics of scavenging animals. Even if it was just for a moment. Lars at length stood up and began kicking dirt over the fire, snuffing the flames out.

“Okay, okay,” he said as he worked. “So maybe a portal is too much. Like, the first time I made one it was more about need. Like I said, I didn’t know I had badass powers at first.”

“Huh,” said Connie, who was sitting again with her chin resting in her palm. “You _need_ to tell me that story, then.”

He raised an eyebrow and scratched his neck. “I thought I did.” When she shook her head, he frowned. “Damn. Well, I guess now we’ve got _plenty_ of time for thaaa-”

He realized his faux pas and bit his tongue, but it was already real, already out there. The air around them grew awkward. The idea that thousands of years were sprawled out in front of them was not new, but it still made them deeply uncomfortable.

Although it was always right there at the front of their minds, it remained difficult to talk about. So generally, they didn’t. It had only been a handful of weeks since their search for Rose had abruptly ended, and they preferred to focus on what they could do... even though they had nothing to do.

So Connie had focused all of her new unsleeping, tireless energy on this new hobby, and Lars had been there to witness each and every painful moment of it.

Connie inhaled deeply through her nose. Feeling her lungs fill up with air brought her back. She then exhaled and broke the silence.

“Go on,” she urged him. “You sounded like you were having an idea.”

He shook himself for the purpose of shedding the downer thoughts from his mind and took a breath as well. “Yeah, okay.” He exhaled. “So listen. At first it was like, I dunno, an emotional thing? Like, one time I smashed up the back room of the pastry shop because I burned my thumb on a hot tray. Blue Lace was there…”

And despite himself - despite the decade and a half it had been since he’d last seen her, he grimaced. “Ugh. I’m lookin’ down the barrel of _forty,_ and I’m thousands of years in the past. How am I _still_ embarrassed about that?”

She cast doubt on this story immediately. “You heal quickly.”

He could feel his patience leaving him and rolled his eyes. “I can still feel _pain,_ you know. Anyway, I guess it was a fight or flight thing-“

She shook her head. “No, that’s not right either.”

He had a look of exhaustion on his face as his eyes settled on her.

Gesturing at him, she began to explain. “Just today, I watched as you made a portal so you could simply _reach through_ and grab your shirt from where you’d left it hanging on that tree.“ She pointed. “Not twenty feet away.”

“...So?” he asked without a hint of sarcasm.

“You could have walked!” exclaimed Connie, arms wide. “That’s not fight or flight. That’s being lazy.”

Lars folded his arms. “What do you want from me!? I’m trying to give you pink magic advice and you’re all-“

“Tell me how you did that!” she shouted in frustration. “Tell me something _useful!_ ”

“I _can’t!”_ Lars shouted back. “I didn’t have some awesome pink friend with _me_ to show me what to do! I have _no frickin’ idea_ what to say to you! I wish I did!”

At her wide-eyed look, he took a calming breath and continued in a lower voice, “All I can say is... I had to be under attack and scared and running for my life for it to happen, _and_ it was an accident. But once I had a feel for it, _then_ I could start figuring out how to make portals and blast stuff whenever I wanted.“ The words were tumbling out of him. “Does that make _any sense at all?_ ”

Although Connie was crestfallen, she nodded. “I guess.”

“I mean I… hope it doesn’t happen like that, for you?” He tried a smile. “You’re smart. Way smarter than me. I bet you’ll figure out your powers some other way.”

Connie looked doubtful. “I don’t know,” she replied, voice flat. “It hasn’t happened yet.”

Lars sighed and clapped her on the back. “These powers. They don’t come easy. As far as I know, there’s a cost involved.”

Confused by this, she tilted her head. “I... thought I already paid.”

“By _dying?”_ He snorted even though it wasn’t funny. “Dying is easy, my dude. You know that.”

* * *

When it finally happened, she was under attack. She was scared. She was running for her life.

Somehow they’d become separated. Somehow, there’d been no time. Somehow, she’d been backed into a corner.

Before her, the squad of towering agates approached.

Her sword was gone. Her wits, also gone. They wouldn’t want to talk. There would be no Zoo, not this time. Not for her.

She faced death for the first time in this second life.

She took a deep breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There won’t be too many of these unless inspiration strikes! At the moment, there are four other shorts in the works. Hope you enjoyed!


	2. Pyramid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This takes place during Counting Down: Chapter 7. The Centuries, after the building of Stonehenge.

# 2\. Pyramid.

~*~

It was due to their actions that an unnatural Stonehenge stood casting wrong shadows over the undergrowth.

By all logic it shouldn’t have happened the way that it had. And yet it stood, a stain on the timeline. A blight on the planet. A plague on their minds.

They alternated between anxiety and indifference over it.

Anxiety for the future - for the out of control wrecking ball they may have inadvertently set on causality, and therefore their chances of setting things right.

And indifference because it was done. It happened, and there was no point in dwelling on it because maybe this was how it always happened. Maybe Stonehenge was always supposed to be a weird paradox that didn’t bear thinking too closely about because it made no sense, as bootstrap paradoxes are wont to do.

Although it was a difficult kind of forced indifference, it allowed them to carry on with their seemingly immortal lives.

But never for too long.

They considered tearing it down, returning the blocks to the quarry from which they’d been sourced, but that scared them as well. What if, then, Stonehenge was never built by the local humans? They hadn’t seemed interested in building it before. What they had done - whatever it was - confused them more the more they thought about it.

It was a popular topic for debate over the oncoming decades, during which both participants switched sides often, even during the same argument. Sometimes their agony and confusion was such that they even found themselves on the same side about it. Today was one of many such days.

“It’s decided, then. We’ll smash Stonehenge into dust,” said Connie, pushing fist into palm, after the latest discussion. She then sat up, ready to open a portal to the southern someday-English countryside they’d decided on a whim to ruin dozens of years prior.

They were in a forest, sitting on the high boughs of a tree they’d arbitrarily decided to climb, miles away from anything that could object to them being there. They knew this because they’d checked. They were extremely careful - but not always, as evidenced by the reasonably loud fashion of their speech.

“Yeah!” Lars looked determined too, but only for a brief moment. Then he bit his lip. “Wait.”

She looked over at him from her branch, her brow furrowed, awaiting his explanation.

“...We can’t,” he said, finally.

“Nnnngh. I know.” She flopped back to lean against the tree’s trunk in defeat.

“It’s not fair,” Connie moaned. “All this dread and fear. Us being here is not our fault but here we are anyway, in a kind of… strange, beautiful hell.”

“A boring hell,” Lars agreed. Then he lowered his voice and muttered, “Why did we even build that thing, anyway?”

She gaped at him and threw a twig which bounced harmlessly off the side of his head. “It was _your idea, idiot.”_

Lars gave her a pissy glare. “Look. For every one of my stupid ideas we follow through with, there are at least ten thousand we don’t. Why we had to do the Stonehenge thing is beyond me.”

He paused a moment as the wind moved through the tree, causing it to sway gently.

“And frankly,” he added, swinging his legs. “I blame you.”

_“What?”_

“You encourage my bad behaviour.”

Hers was a gasp of shock. “I never!”

Comically mimicking her voice, he gave an example. “Poke the sleeping bear, Lars, go on! It’ll be funny!” He dropped the mockery. “It’s a good thing it takes us one-to-three days to heal severe wounds, because bears _don’t find anything funny.”_

She eyed him evenly and said only three words. “The Mammoth Incident.”

He opened his mouth and pointed his finger at her. He looked ready to angrily explain himself, but no words came out. His finger curled back into his fist.

“You got me,” he said at last. “I have no excuse for that one. ‘Sides boredom, probably.”

But the sunlight that drifted down through the gaps in the canopy above was warm and the breeze was nice. It was hard to be in a bad mood on a day like today, in a place like right here.

Connie’s white streaks glimmered in the moving light as she sucked on her lip, deep in thought.

“We should check, though,” she advised. “Just. Y’know. For safety.”

* * *

Sometimes it feels good to live in ignorance. Sometimes it’s comforting. And sometimes, just sometimes, the idea of wallowing in it a little longer than one should will make one drag one’s feet and seek the long route in discovery of the truth.

That’s exactly what Lars and Connie did. Instead of hopping a portal and getting where they wanted to go in an instant, they instead walked across the ocean. And even so, on a journey that would have taken a pair of unsleeping immortals a mere ten weeks of constant walking, they somehow managed to roll it out to many months - all in their quest to delay the inevitable.

The fact that they existed in a time that flirted with the periphery of recorded human history was normal by now, so it was normal to see bands of humans crossing the lands. They took a holiday from their main mission and followed one of these groups out of simple curiosity for a while, being as careful as they could, until one evening they found that some food had been laid out for some reason, away from their campsite.

Lars leaned down. “Bread. And a woodfowl.” He tsked and stood back up, casting a glance at their surroundings. There was nothing out here except the two of them and this package which, until recently, had been carefully wrapped in leaves. “What do you think? Trap?”

“I think it’s an offering,” said Connie, who had squatted down to inspect it herself.

“For...?”

“ _Us,_ maybe,” she rose back up to her full height. “If so, we’ve been spotted. They probably think we’re gems or monsters or, I dunno, spirits or something. They could have left this here to appease us or distract us and hope we go away.”

“Oof.”

“Either way, we should leave.”

“ _Or_... maybe we could say hi?” came Lars’ suggestion. Without giving her the chance to protest, he continued. “Hear me out. We give their food back, ask them not to worry about us, and say that they should go about their, uh-“ He waved an arm in the general direction of the human campsite and continued, “Whatever this whole affair is.” He paused to think a moment. “Migration? Is that it?”

She smirked at him as she walked past him. “Come on. We were on our way to Egypt.”

He blinked. “Oh. Yeah.” He nodded. _“Right.”_

* * *

They weren’t sure exactly where they were headed, except for a general idea. The last time they’d been to the inland sea was during their decade-long search for Rose Quartz, and now everything was different. The forests were more _more,_ back then. Now, there was more sunbaked desert along the coast.

Finally they came across what they felt was the correct river. They walked along it a while only to gather that it was the wrong river.

But they knew that would only be a matter of time before they found the right one, so before they resumed their journey they decided to waste some of that time.

They struck inland, found an uninhabitable patch of desert, and promptly began prying up rocks and boulders. This had become a common pastime for the two wanderers - stacking large rocks as high or as intricately as they could without falling. Sometimes they built towers, other times sweeping arches, carefully balancing each one as they went.

And when they did fall, they only set about stacking them again.

Before they knew it, years had passed. And, before they knew it, they found themselves forced to leave by encroaching humans seeking to expand some empire or other.

Once more, they remembered their mission.

After weeks of slow, reluctant (and yet, somehow, restless) hiking they came upon a dense jungle and, from aerial observations as they fell towards it, found that it hid a sprawling river delta. It didn’t matter which stream they picked; all they had to do was follow it south and they would all come together into one.

So they picked one and walked for days in heat that would have scorched them had they still been human. They had to take many detours to avoid contact - towns, cities and miles of farmland were easily found around these parts.

Cresting a rolling hill, they at last saw it in the far distance. Neither had expected to come across it easily or so soon, but there it was. They hurried onward, and with every fresh step they took it rose taller and taller before them, block by block up from the desert sands-

It was unmistakably the structure that would someday become known as the Great Pyramid.

Lars and Connie looked on in fascination. They hadn’t expected the massive structure to have been so... _massive._ Its finely-polished limestone sides were gleaming, glowing smooth and perfectly white in the high sunlight. Not only that, but the very top of it was capped in gold.

It almost glowed, sticking out as it did against its lightly forested surroundings and dwarfing the smaller pyramid that stood nearby.

“Oo, the Great Sphinx,” said Connie finally, after the initial dazzle had dulled somewhat and she began looking further afield. The man-faced lion loafed in the sun a bit beyond the largerof the pyramids. He had his nose still intact and was also smooth, white, gleaming limestone - even more the fierce guardian than she could still recall from when she used to pour through old history books, lifetimes upon lifetimes ago.

Beyond it all, a third project was happening in real time. The smallest of the three main pyramids was currently in the process of being built. Although they dared not get too close for fear of being seen, they could make out the legions of workers toiling away on it - hauling great limestone chunks to be sanded down, yet others hauling the beautiful stones to where they would rest for eternity.

Wiping grime from an eye in order to get a better look, Lars whistled. “I never expected them to look so... _new,”_ he said, impressed beyond belief. “Man, we _sucked_ at building Stonehenge. These people are something else.”

She didn’t respond, so he looked over in time to catch a tear rolling down her face. “What’s wrong?“ he asked.

“Nothing,” she said with a smile as she dabbed the tear away. “It’s just - _thank goodness,”_ she breathed. She turned to hug Lars, who laughed and hugged back.

This was a relief, and not a minor one. This discovery lifted a weight lifted from both of their shoulders. For the majority of their extended journey, they felt a vague dread - an uncomfortable feeling neither could seem to shake for long.

But now they knew that all the worry had been for nothing.

They could rest easy, finally, because now they knew for absolute certain-

“We don’t have to build the pyramids.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Randomly got inspired enough to research the pyramids at Giza in order to finish this chapter, lol. Even made a little headway with the next one.
> 
> I’m still writing, btw. I’ve got a few things on the docket. They’re just unfolding more slowly than usual. <3 Life stuff.


	3. High.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place sometime during Counting Down: Chapter 8. Millennia, not long (relatively speaking) after their final visit to the Prime Kindergarten.
> 
> Also CW: recreational use of cannabis.

# 3\. High.

~*~

The ground yawned and rolled.

From above fell debris that hit him in the face, causing him to blanch and jolt upright. He rubbed at his head furiously as the earth slowly settled down once again.

“Ugh. How long have I been spacing out in this cave?” But, like most of the questions he’d ever been moved to ask himself, he had no answer.

So it was probably time to go.

He gathered his cloak and wandered out from the cave at length to find the lush green and blue world outside more than a little unsettled. The air was thick with scrambling birds climbing in their flight, and on the other side of a nearby brook he saw an indistinct straggling herd animal leaving in a hurry.

The tall trees were still shaking, and not from the wind.

The earthquake just now had upset the pants off every living thing in this region, except for him. But then, he was used to them. He’d experienced so many during his long life and had thus far remained unscathed, so he wasn’t bothered. In fact, the rubble hitting him in the face earlier was probably the worst damage that one had dealt to him, and it was easily brushed aside.

So as he stretched in the open, feeling the warm light from the sun once again on his face, all thought of the boring little earthquake left him.

He inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with the air he still thought he needed in order to live, and let it out again.

Then, frowning, sniffed the air once more. The scent hitting him was piney, dank and familiar. Deeply interested, Lars wandered off in the direction from which the breeze had blown.

* * *

The campsite on the cliff had been their longstanding rendezvous point for nearly a millennia, so he wasn’t surprised to see her as he touched down in the dust. She was sitting facing the ocean away from him, her legs dangling down over the side of the cliff. She glanced back at him as his portal disappeared.

“Hey,” Connie murmured casually. “I was wondering when you’d give up.”

“This isn’t me giving up, lady,” came his sharp retort as he sauntered over, past the crumbling remains of the last cabin they’d built decades earlier. “This is you _losing.”_

“Mmm, yeah, hide-and-seek probably wasn’t meant to be played by ageless immortals with instant access to almost every part of the planet.”

“So. It’s been a while, yeah? Anything new with you?” he asked as he plopped himself down beside her, swinging his legs over the cliff's edge as well.

Connie hummed a moment. “Well, I made a new pair of pants. You like?”

“Gorgeous." He looked down at them; a drab burlap affair. “The height of fashion.” His own were raggy and riddled with holes, and his feet were bare - his last pair of handmade boots having disintegrated years prior.

She smirked at his sarcasm. “Oh, and I saw a human. A few of them, actually.”

He became interested. “What? Where? _Here?”_

Connie gestured behind them by throwing a thumb over her shoulder. “Deep in the forest. I followed them for a while, but they must’ve figured they weren’t alone and turned around.”

“Y’know,” he started, after a moment’s consideration. “Humans tend to avoid the corrupted. What if we caught some and brought them here?” He shrugged. “Release them in the forest.”

When she looked doubtful, he added, “It might encourage them to stay away,” as if she hadn’t already gleaned his reasoning.

But Connie gave the idea a moment’s consideration anyway. “Sounds annoying,” came her reckoning as she rested her chin in her hand. “And overly damaging to the timeline. Like, what if Rose and the others don’t settle here because of it?” She inhaled and smiled up at the partially-cloudy dusking sky. “What if the reason they like it here is because of its peace and beauty?”

A moment passed, during which they watched the light glint at them from the moving water below. Lars couldn’t really argue with her on that point.

“That can’t be too far away now, can it?” he asked.

“No idea.” Connie rubbed her hands together awkwardly. Her brow creased as her mind scrambled to piece together their approximate temporal location. “Now that Amethyst’s gone, it could be-“

“She’s not _gone,”_ he gently reminded her. “She’s just. She’s... found the others. Like she was supposed to.”

“Yeah,” she said as she exhaled. “Yeah, you’re right. She’s exactly where she needs to be, which means it could happen any decade now.”

The knowledge that they would have to give up this home of theirs lay on them always. Their visits were few and far between, but this familiar hill was by now a part of both of them. Then again, it always had been, even before all this.

Presently, Connie came back to the original topic of discussion. “But, anyway - new pants, saw some humans... nothing much else is new with me. Just the same old Connie.” She smiled. “What about Lars?”

“Me?” He snorted. “I’m fine.”

“Well, how are you?” she pressed. “To what distant and mysterious reaches of the planet and yourself did our game of hide-and-seek take you?”

“Literally a cave somewhere in what-I-think-will-be Asia.”

“A nice one? With glow worms?”

“No.”

She pulled a face. “It didn’t have snakes, did it?”

“None that I saw.”

“Man. I would never have found you,” she admitted with a frown. “I was checking hollow tree logs in what may someday be the Baltic.”

“Pfft,” he smirked. “You were _way_ off.”

Connie lost her smile and pensively pushed her jaw into her palm. Her brow tensed as she gazed back out over the ocean. “We’re not great at killing time,” she muttered.

“No shit. There’s simply too much of it.”

Before the overwhelming existential dread had much more of a chance to take hold, he was waving something in her face. Some kind of branch. It looked to have been pruned, but the scent wafting from the remaining leafy matter was unmistakable.

His was an incorrigible grin. “But at least there’s time for this.”

At long last she moved her eyes from it to his, a smile spread across her face. “You _hooligan.”_

* * *

This was the Sky Arena that Connie remembered from her young life in the distant future. Not the hub of gem activity that it once was, but empty and broken - long abandoned by the very gems that built it.

And now, it was their occasional hangout spot when the fancy took them to take their leave of the planet’s surface.

They’d visited a handful of times since the Corruption, but this was the first time their presence coincided with that of the aurora borealis.

Connie lay in the middle of the arena’s staging area, staring up at the waves of light dancing and swirling in streaks across the darkened sky above. The light caused the crystalline rock that comprised the arena to almost glow, and the entire night was bathed in the very same shimmer that had taken their breath away when they had first arrived.

Long ago, while Connie watched with interest, Lars had carefully modified a vase of gem origin they’d found during an excursion to some forgotten outpost or other. They broke it out for special occasions, and this one seemed more special than most.

Lars ripped one and, after placing the bong down between them, joined her in lying back, hands behind his head, to watch the spectacular display taking place above them.

They existed in the brisk cold of the place for a long while. It was silent, save for the distant low crackling of the magnetic forces sponsoring the event, until Lars piped up.

“Why d’ya think we haven’t seen any jackalopes?” he murmured. Connie remained silent, so he elaborated. “Y’know? Jackalopes. The bunnies with the antlers?”

She moved her head slightly to regard him with a wasted expression that bordered slightly on contempt. “Lars. Jackalopes don’t exist. They never did. You’ll never, ever see one. I promise you this.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Hmmm, no... I kinda feel like we’ll see one someday.”

She chuckled longer than she meant to and sent a hand out to feel for the bong. “Okay, mister. I’m cutting you off.”

At his protest she left it alone, but soon sat up to use it again anyway. They’d created a small fire at their feet that was by now mostly embers, but its purpose was not to combat the cold - she used the smouldering end of the last intact piece of kindling to light the bong.

She inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly, staring up as the colors moved about as if on slow, ethereal waves.

Her voice came out in a whisper. “It’s so... _beautiful._ I’ve never seen it so-“

“Shh. It’s trying to tell us somethin’.”

She widened her eyes as she gazed. “Yeah?”

“Like, the universe,” Lars tried to explain without moving. “Y’know. Maybe it feels bad for us.”

“Huh.”

“Sometimes I think it’s trying to help us, but it knows it can’t.” He waved his hands toward the sky. “Maybe all it can do is give us these beautiful things to look at. It sends us stuff like this so that maybe for a second we can feel like we still belong here. It’s trying to keep us moving. Keep us going.”

Connie blinked slowly. “Then... why do insects still bite us?”

“Heh.” Lars smiled and lowered his arms. “That’s part of it too. You ever seen a gem covered in bug bites?” He closed his eyes sagely. “That’s how we know for sure we belong here, y’know. Even though we’re not hu-”

_”Lars.”_

At her prompting, he opened his eyes. Above them, a kaleidoscope of colors surged along the sky, the sudden increase in activity causing him to lose track of what he was saying. It awed him so much that it was some time before Lars took another hit and was moved to elaborate further upon his makeshift philosophy.

“So, right. The universe,” he continued as he placed the bong down and leaned back. “It doesn’t wish us any specific harm. It can’t help us because what happened was so unnatural and crazy-“

“But _we’re_ unnatural and crazy, Lars,” she whispered from where she was sitting, arms draped over her knees.

“In that case, it remembers what we used to be, and it’s trying.” He waved a hand. “Have I always felt like this? Am I just really high right now? I dunno. But like, I’m staring at this, and my heart is fucking bursting, Connie. I feel it.”

“Or maybe it knows how to help us but it keeps us here on purpose.” Her shoulders sank. “The insects are only to slow us down. Displays like this, to fuck us up.”

He went silent for a long moment, able to see her point as well.

A sliver of high cloud passed by, darkening the lightshow as she voiced another thought. “If I were to break down the numbers, I wonder - how many years have I spent just swatting insects?”

“Four hundred and twenty,” came Lars’ immediate reply, but she ignored him.

“Sometimes I wonder what we’ll be doing instead of fixing everything.” She narrowed her eyes. “Will I be swatting mosquitos? Stacking stones? Staring at the sun?”

“Maybe we’ll see a jackalope. A whole flock of ‘em.”

But it was too late. She was far too upset for jokes. “How will the universe keep us distracted from our... our _thing_ that we _have_ to do someday?”

He raised an arm and tugged on the raggy poncho she was wearing. She resisted at first, but eventually relented. She knocked the bong out of her way as he clumsily guided her into his side.

Lars stared at the sky through half-closed eyes and breathed the air he still didn’t know he didn’t need. Soon, she was breathing in time with him. They lay like that, arms around each other, for a length of time that eluded them both.

“Everything collapses around me,” she said quietly into the still air. “It wouldn’t be the first time something I can’t control has gone horribly wrong.”

When at last he spoke, it was in a whisper. “When the time comes, we’ll be different.”

Overhead, she watched the aurora twist and swirl as if in liquid skies, as it would have done regardless of them being there to witness it.

“We’ll be ready.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really wanted to have them doing weed for fun into the main work somehow, but all my situational ideas suuuucked and I thought it would detract from the overall tone. I think I did an okay job with this, though.
> 
> Also, I just love gem locations and how they jive with their surroundings. I want more. T_T


	4. Hunt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This takes place sometime during Counting Down: Chapter 8. Millennia, before Connie and Lars try for the moon.

# 4\. Hunt.

~*~

The desperate immortal moved quickly through the undergrowth.

He was alone. But these days he spent all of his time alone. He spent that time alone harried, always looking over his shoulder. Although he sometimes tried to think of other things...

_Like the way the Earth’s shadow recently stained the moon a surreal brick-red-_

_Like the latest band of humans expanding into an area he’d never seen them before except in maps, long ago-_

_Like flowing magenta hair on a crystal island and what he could have said if things had been different-_

...In the depths of his mind he was always waiting, always wondering - forever questioning from whence the next strike would come.

Which angle, what form it would take.

Lars gritted his teeth as he jumped and scaled the giant fallen tree trunk blocking his path with all the ease of an expert traceur. The battle axe was in his hands at all times; the hassle of bringing out it through his head when he needed it never failed to cost him crucial milliseconds. He dared not put it down, not even for a brief moment.

As he skidded deftly down the other side of the trunk, he thought about his failures, all the times he’d tried to swing it to the contrary. Despite all his efforts, there was no doubt in his mind that he was the one being hunted.

Every trap he had set, had failed. Every attempt to evade, foiled. No matter where he went, no matter to which far reach of the planet he would flee, soon enough the feeling always came back to him. It was a pull on his chest, a force like magnetism.

Right now, as he hit the dirt again, he couldn’t feel it. Nothing was out there. But as he resumed his jog, part of him nagged at him. Despite keeping his pace, he slowed his breathing. If he tried, if he closed his eyes and opened himself, he could sometimes force it-

Lo and behold, there it was now.

A presence, most certainly that of his on-again-off-again quarry. It was faint, on the periphery of whatever pink sense this was.

As soon as it had come, it was gone. Lars stumbled on a snaking tree root and his eyes flew back open. For a moment uncertain if he’d ever really felt it at all, he soon grit his teeth, shook himself, and kept going. It was probably worth leaving this forest.

He had to give it to her, and not for the first time - she was extremely good at not being found when she wanted.

He kept up his steady slog.

The foliage above and below him was dense and dark. He’d been moving through this forest for half the moonlit night, but now that he could see again, it appeared to be thinning into shrubbery. Up ahead, he could see that it also thinned further into grasslands, and soon he was amongst it.

His pace slowed to a stop. All that lay in front of him now was a wide, rolling plain that swept over hills, bordered by distant mountains blue against the red and gold dawning sky. It all seemed harmless enough, but by this point he was suspicious of everything.

The suspicion paid off immediately - there _was_ something else out here. He swung the axe around in time for their blades to lock.

For their eyes to lock.

Connie wore a toothy grin which twisted into a predatory snarl as she exerted her considerable strength against her quarry. But Lars couldn’t be pushed back. He took a deep breath before gathering all he had-

He thrust her back, and upward.

But she was quick and nimble. She twisted around in midair like a lithe cat and hit the ground crouching, her sword still shining wickedly in her grip.

There was no time for her to rest - only to pivot and block a slash as the light from Lars’ portal disappeared behind him. She thrusted her blade forward; Lars lurched out of its way.

“You can’t sneak up on me like that,” she scolded as she advanced on him. They parried, every strike of their gem-steel clashing clear into the empty air around them.

“Neither can you,” came his retort right before he altered the direction of his blades. She jumped over it as he swung at her legs. “I totally smelled you,” he carried on in a conversational tone. He swing the blades back around and raised the weapon at her.

Connie, with a sinister smile, replied, “Can you smell this?”

With that, she stomped the sole of her boot into the dirt, and from it cascaded minute rips in reality that traveled upward through the air and rent a portal into the space a few yards above her. With a wicked smile, Connie jumped straight up and disappeared into it.

Before Lars could think about following her, the portal swirled out of existence and a concussive blast hit him from somewhere above, sending him reeling and stumbling. He would have hit the ground hard if not for a portal of his own springing to life below him.

Connie, high up in freefall, cast about. Swinging herself around to get a better view of her surroundings, hair whipping and lashing upward as she fell, she became somewhat ill-at-ease. She couldn’t see him. She’d hit him, and he’d fallen back into a portal - she knew that much. Now where was he?

But she realized in a shining moment of clarity that she already knew. Lifting her head, she saw that he was directly above her.

He was upside-down, facing her, waiting as he fell with her. Now that she had noticed him, he flashed her a crooked smile, bright glowing eyes, and took a deep breath. Her eyes widened and she quickly brought her heels together.

And in a blinding flash she was gone, only to wave her sword at him from a hundred yards away, still falling. Lars lost his breath and groaned. She poked her tongue out at him.

”Not fair! I _had_ you!” he complained loudly.

“Nothing’s fair!” she hollered back over the rushing wind.

He twisted himself in the air so that he was now right-side-up. His eyes glowed bright as he drew a deep breath. Slashing the air with his axe blade, he sent a blast into the resulting portal.

She saw the immediate future play out before her, and that there was no time to do anything about it but curse, perhaps.

 _“Crap,”_ she breathed.

His timing was perfect - Connie found herself knocked both off course and off balance as she caught the concussive disruption blasting from the portal’s exit as her fall passed in front.

She swung her sword out wildly to try to regain control of the fall, but it wasn’t happening fast enough. On the second try, she managed to fall through a portal of her own and an instant later she was scrambling to her feet in the dust.

She didn’t see how, only that Lars landed neatly on his feet several yards away.

Connie cranked her head up to take in the smug look on his face. Strategies raced through her head as she tightened her grip on the sword handle and righted herself.

“That was the wrong move, kid,” she murmured.

“What was?” He thrummed his fingers along the axe handle as he adjusted his grip. He eyed her evenly. “The way I shot you out of the air just now?”

“Nah.” She hurtled toward him, arcing her blade as she went. “That smarmy little smirk!”

Lars braced himself and pre-emptively swung the axe around, slashing not her, but the air between them. Connie’s eyes widened but she couldn’t stop - she fell stumbling into the portal he had just called forth into the fabric of reality.

He laughed openly as she rematerialized some distance away among the grasses, but snapped his mouth shut when her body wrenched around and her eyes fixated on him.

It hit him, suddenly, that he’d just helped her get her bearings.

It was his turn to curse. “Naw, _shit.”_ He swung around to make a run for it.

But there was Connie, blocking the way, backlit briefly by the light of her vanishing portal. Fury shone in her eyes as he skidded to a stop. It was then and only then that Lars realized he’d perhaps been too cocky. Maybe even regretted some of the aerial stuff, just a scosche.

There was no time for that - she was on him. They locked blades again, and with teeth grit, each put all their effort into pushing the other back. Suddenly, Connie spun around and swiped at his torso. He lurched out of the way and turned the momentum into a swing of his axe, but she saw it coming and blocked it efficiently.

Once she had established a rythm with him, Connie pulled away, which took him by surprise. He struggled to keep his footing and recoiled, barely managing to swing the blade in front of him in time to parry.

She’d had plenty of time to figure out how to effectively fight against a battleaxe with a sword, and she was able to deflect every thrust, counter every blow-

And there it was. In the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it instant before making a portal, he had a tell. It was the way he held his tongue and slowed the swing of the axe. And the way he leaned more of his weight into his step-

Her sword was an extension of her, and she knew what had to be done in this narrow window of opportunity.

One artful handling of her sword later, the axe shot out of his hands. It cartwheeled through the air across the plain some distance before it thunked half a blade deep into a large boulder as if it were a knife into butter.

Lars gaped open-mouthed at it for a long moment before turning his gaze back to her. With her sword slung up against her shoulder, she took a step forward and gave him a playful push.

“So... hi,” she said with a disarming smile. “How’ve you been?”

He smiled back, giving her a squeeze. “Not too bad. That was some really fancy bladework there.”

“Thank you. Those were some creative portals.”

“Thanks. I missed you.”

“I missed you too.”

Connie’s smile softened. She put the sword back into her head and, as they walked over, they talked about this and that.

“Did you catch that eclipse a couple years back?” she asked as they reached the boulder.

“I almost didn’t!” he exclaimed, studying how deep the weapon had embedded into the rock. Connie stood back to watch as he place both hands on the handle. “I had to find a mountain because it was too cloudy.” He paused briefly. “The lunar eclipse, right?”

“Yeah. I almost called a truce so we could watch it together.”

This messed up his attempt to free the axe. His hands slipped and he staggered a little. “Wh. Wait. We can call a _truce?”_

“Sure.” She shrugged. “Why not?”

He spread his arms wide, eyes bulging. “That wasn’t in the rules!” When she looked blank, he continued. “We had rules! Remember? The _rules?!”_

“Well-“

“We scratched them into that rock on that mountain!”

_“Yeah-”_

But he wasn’t done with his outrage. “I thought I was trapped in a bleak forever with someone who _loved_ rules!”

Connie twisted the side of her mouth and raised her brow at him. “I thought of them more as guidelines.”

“Guidelines-“ he spluttered. Massaging the bridge of his nose, he shortly shook his head. “Look, okay, whatever. No rules. Only guidelines. Fine.” He gripped the handle again and began to tug. “I’ll keep that in mind for the next round.”

The axe came free rather quickly due to his considerable strength as a post-human, and its sudden release saw him stagger back once again. Connie leaned back against the boulder, arms folded as she watched him study the blade.

What appeared to be a scuff mark only ended up being grit on his thumb - once again, gem steel proved itself to be incredibly durable. But he glared at it closely anyway, and even sat down in the dust to focus all his attention on it.

As he fretted over the state of his blade, Connie spoke. “We’re each other’s only company in a world we have to let change and grow without us, Lars.” She shrugged. “I know we’re not really _people_ people, but I’m still- I mean, who else am I gonna invite to watch an eclipse with me?”

Connie saw his frown as it was happening. “Oh, stop with that.” She batted lightly at him. “You’re my best friend. You’re great. This isn’t a ‘no other viable options’ thing. Even if there was a whole third person I could turn to, I’d still pick you.”

“Well, there’s Rose,” he said.

She narrowed her eyes and tapped a finger to her chin. “Good point. Yeah, I’d dump you for Rose in a natural heartbeat.”

 _“How are you in such a good mood?”_ he seethed with a glance up at her, but her smile was too disarming.

“I’m just happy to see you.”

Lars squinted back down at the blade. “I’m sure Rose would love that, though,” he said with a sigh. “She’d make great company during something like that.”

“She always has these amazing takes on the Earth, and humans. She’s so...” Connie’s expression fell. “Refreshing.” She shifted a little awkwardly. “Uh. I almost told her everything, once.”

Lars’ double-bladed battle axe shone in the morning sunlight again as he raised it up. Finally satisfied, he presently shifted the weight of it around in his hands and rose again to his feet. “Here’s a hot new fact,” he said. “Me too. And you whine to me about it, and I whine to you, and we do this every decade or two, right before we find something else new and pointless to do so we can feel like we’re still livin’ some kind of a life.” He grinned, all teeth. “Speaking of, let’s start over.”

“Do you want a-“

“No. No headstarts.” His wide grin softened into a faded smile. He seemed tired. “I’m gonna get you someday without one.”

She snorted at the very idea. But the thought of spending the best part of another decade alone as she partook in yet another of these prolonged training sessions didn’t exactly grip her in the way it used to.

Besides. All it would take was an unexpected accident, and either one of them could potentially end up alone - abjectly _alone_ \- for the rest of this forever.

The thought of it crushed her.

“Actually.” She hesitated. “Lars. Would you... want to hang out instead?”

He immediately shoved the axe away through his head. “Stars, _yes.”_ He both looked and sounded relieved as he took a couple of steps closer. “I wasn’t going to say it if you weren’t. C’mon.”

He grabbed the sleeve of her poncho and tugged her along.

“Hey, watch it-“

He let it go as she started walking along with him. “There’s this lake in the Great North,” he was saying. “It’s the bluest lake I’ve ever seen. If we walk there, it’ll give us time to catch up.”

“Oh!” She pressed her hands together. “If we’re sightseeing, there’s this awesome rock formation I found in someday-Ireland.”

“Great!” He performed some dubious spacial math. “Uh, I think that’s more on the way. Let’s do that first.”

“We’ll be in the same neighbourhood as Stonehenge. Wanna check it out? See what the humans are using it for now?”

“Can you _not_ remind me that we did that?”

Together they struck out into the rolling grasslands as the sky cycled through the morning spectrum and settled at last on blue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve had fun writing these! I have one more chapter planned and then I will call this work complete, but may add others if I think of them. 
> 
> If anyone has any suggestions for more of these little scenes, let me know. I can’t promise I’ll do them, but if something hits me just right, I might.
> 
> I have several other SU fanfic projects I’m planning out/working on (slowly though due to time constraints) but I kinda don’t want their chapters to turn into the sort of 8-9k word monstrosities taking weeks to write that Counting Down did. So I’ve kind of turned this into an experiment to see if I can just reign it in and write short-ish chapters. It’s looking pretty promising.
> 
> Anyway enough about me - hope things are going okay in your neck of the woods. Be safe!


	5. Lion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This spans a few decades of the 18th/19th centuries sometime during Counting Down: Chapter 9. The Lifetimes.

# 5\. Lion.

~*~

He first noticed the familiar shape of the acacia tree drift in from the fading darkness.

Then, the figure towering above him unblurred slowly into focus as the pain receded. The expression on her face, the liquid running from her eyes - it all meant nothing to him.

He gingerly moved one forepaw, then the other. With his pads against the warm sand, he remembered what he’d just been doing and jolted with a start. His eyes flicked this way and that, but there was no sign of the creatures he had - up until this very moment, it seemed - been fighting.

Lion filled his lungs, but not even a whiff remained of them. They had been just as odd, as scentless as the handful of others like them that he and his pride had encountered and avoided in their wanderings through the desert and savannah.

And as odd and as scentless as her.

Well, scentless was an exaggeration. In the case of his friend, there was something of a faint scent - flowers, perhaps, but they were of a sort with which he was unfamiliar. She smelled nothing like the lions of his pride, nor like the dripping prey the lionesses brought in. Neither had she ever reminded him of any of the multitudes of creatures roaming the vast savannah.

Likewise, the creatures he’d fought had smelled equally like nothing, save faintly of sand and despair.

His friend, this strange two-legged being that his pride’s elders had attempted in vain to devour a few decades prior, rushed forward, arms outstretched.

This was something she did often. It was clear that she was a being who yearned for physical contact with others, as much as any lion in this pride, but she’d always gone about it in such _odd_ ways. This gesture, this flinging of her upper limbs around his shoulders, was as alien as her at first but he’d become somewhat accustomed to it.

He heard her speak her beautiful gibberish.

”This is my fault,” she breathed. “It wasn’t your fight. I should have done more, I could have protected you better.” Her fingers trembled as she gripped him through his fur. “I- I’m sorry. I.“

He shortly had had enough of it. Squirming his shoulders out of her embrace, he instead began to lick at her face.

She laughed, and more tears flowed down her cheeks as if to replace the ones he’d lapped up. The curious pride gathered closer around them, some watching the bizarre display taking place before them in puzzlement.

Others gazed up at the magenta bubble that hung weightless in the air where she had left it. Contained within were five gemstones.

Their corrupted facets glimmered in the high sunlight.

* * *

His friend began to visit more often than she had done in the past. She paid him special attention, too. When she patted his mane, her paw sometimes (for lack of a better word,) _fell in_. The burst of light and delicate noise from this phenomenon startled him.

Lion saw the curiosity in her eyes about all this. She was as pleasant and curious as any other lion in his pride, but she was also respectful and never pressed when he leaned away from her. She resigned her hand back to her lap, smiling softly at his reservation.

He had no way of knowing that she was accustomed to a similar kind of behaviour from other mysterious pink beings. Rose turned her eyes back to the view.

This evening, the sky was ablaze with red and gold. Silhouetted in the distance loomed the Sand Fortress - a haphazard collection of sections of walls, stairs to nowhere, towers and spirals reaching impossibly high.

Every so often it would thrust a new tower skyward, only for an earlier one to disintegrate and fall back into sand.

It was a dangerous, unnatural place where deadly, choking sandstorms could spring up with no warning. His pride was familiar with the fortress and instinctively avoided it wherever it moved, as did all the other animals in the region.

He lowered his head to rest on his forepaws as he felt the warm desert breeze ruffle his mane. The pretty sounds rolling out of her face were pleasant to listen to at times like these.

“It’s only a desert glass trying to protect herself,” she told him quietly. “She is hard to get to, so we don’t know what we can do for her yet.” She rested her chin on a fist. “Not even Garnet is sure, and she’s been trying.”

He rolled lazily onto his back and blinked up at her. He was always so charming, and she smiled lightly.

“Checking up on her is how I met your people, you know. You weren’t around back then.” Her smile widened. “But I can tell we’re going to be friends for quite a while.”

He sneezed. Her smile slowly became a frown.

“I just. I wish you could understand what it means that you’re like this. Do you even suspect anything is different?” She waited a moment even though she knew there would be no clear response from the lion.

“Just know that if you have any questions, I’ll do my best to help. I want to be there for you.” She hesitated and stared wistfully skyward before adding, “Like I wish I could be there for the others.”

The implication that there were more like him out there somewhere was lost on Lion, even though he always listened closely whenever she spoke (despite pretending otherwise most of the time).

She continued to talk about this and that and when it came time to part ways again, he accompanied her to the warp pad like he usually did. He was curious about where she went and what she did when she wasn’t there, but once again she convinced him stay down on the ground, only to watch as the platform came to life and whisked her away in a burst of light.

There was no way to follow her, but he didn’t sweat it terribly. He had his pride to get back to, and she hers.

* * *

The sprawling savannah endured the coming seasons. Lion watched them pass, himself unchanging, as the members of his pride continued to grow in spite of him.

Initially, this wasn’t a huge deal. When the others around his age gradually began to complain bout bad backs and niggling old wounds that ached ever harder on days that were hotter than average, he lacked the capacity to wonder why he above all others remained as youthful and vibrant as ever.

Every wound he’d ever received healed very quickly, but the ability to dwell on such things was lost on lions.

In these times of prosperity there was no reason to suspect he was any different from the other lions of his pride apart from his odd hue. He slept when his pride slept, and ate when they ate. He had no reason not to. It was the way things always had been, and always would be.

But not for long.

* * *

During a time of low food, when water was scarce, he found himself as vital and alert as ever before.

And for perhaps the first time, he also found himself puzzled. It wasn’t in a lion’s nature to think too deeply about these things, but a new wrinkle was beginning to fold in his stubborn cat brain. Something set him apart. _Something_ kept him going when the others were starving and could barely stand.

It was ancient custom that the lionesses of the pride would go out hunting, but something inside tugged at him. Something forced him to act. This crisis meant that he and he alone was fit for the task, after all, and so he left his pride in search of prey.

He struck deep into the roasting savannah to find it devoid of life. He ran tirelessly through the day and night, over dried-up riverbeds and through patches of desert until he came upon a straggling herd beast. The creature pulled himself along on shaking legs, obviously too weak to keep up with his cohorts as they sought cooler pastures.

The blatantly pink predator crouched in the russet gold tussock and stalked his unaware prey as it struggled along. He bided his time, waiting for the perfect moment at which to strike-

Only to have his nerve leave him when the ground underpaw jolted and shook.

The spooked beast put on an extra burst of speed and scrambled away as Lion blanched and cast about, searching with wide eyes for the source of the disturbance which grew more intense with every passing moment. He didn’t have to search for very long.

Not far away from him, rising slowly from the sands, was a gigantic burnt-colored creature, like a centipede with chitinous armor, and a face that reminded him of the way the flowers of the savannah opened with the rising sun. It didn’t seem to care about being stealthy - it roared at him, a far more horrendous mess of a noise than he would ever be able to imagine.

He scrambled back in the dust, the dry grasses snapping around him as he quickly decided that standing his ground against this gigantic thing would be nearly impossible.

Besides, he had a mission. His entire pride was at stake and he was no good to them injured, or worse. So he turned and ran.

He ran further and harder and faster than he ever had before - all the while fully aware, to his horror and dismay, that the creature was willing and able to give chase.

It didn’t seem to know exhaustion.

But, luckily, neither did he.

He was able to stay ahead as it slithered after him, breaking trees and leaving a massive trail in the dirt in its wake. It lunged forward a few times, snapping with its huge mouth, but he was able to dart to the side and avoid being snatched up.

This wouldn’t do. He had to swing the advantage his way somehow.

He put on a burst of additional speed and when he felt there was enough distance between him and the beast, he spun, sliding in the dust. The creature screamed horribly once more, and the sound cut sharp into Lion’s brain.

Fighting the urge to keep running, he flexed his claws in the grit and braced himself. From his chest sprung a roar - a desperate attempt to warn the enormous creature that he wouldn’t be going down easy.

He never expected his foe to be blown back by the force of it.

He watched, more puzzled than ever, as the armored worm thing recoiled and shook its head about as if disoriented. He anxiously clutched at the dirt with his claws once more. If he was going to win this, he had to act now before it collected itself. So Lion took another step forward, flicked his tail, filled his lungs, and roared again.

The front part of the worm’s huge body flew back, and the head of it struck a nearby boulder.

Lion hesitated, still thoroughly confused, as the creature began to collect itself. He didn’t like his chances of a physical attack against those chunks of armor, and he did not wish to get anywhere near the thing’s gaping mouth, so at length he turned and, once again, ran.

The ground shaking beneath him once again indicated that the creature was giving chase. He was well and truly frustrated by now, but the only thing he could think to do was keep running through this open landscape that was becoming less and less familiar the deeper he plowed into it.

In his haste he crested a hill that turned out to be the edge of a cliff and, before he could stop himself, he sailed over the edge and plummeted into the void.

With the wind whistling through his mane and no way to save himself, panic gripped him. He waved his paws out in front of him, but even a lion could see that it was useless. All he could think to do was let out one last terrified roar.

A flash of light energy burst to life in front of him. If light could ever possibly resemble a mysterious piece of wall suspended in the air, it was now. The terrified Lion immediately fell into it-

And spilled out onto a stony ground not an instant later.

After a surprised yelp, he gritted his teeth and scrambled back up onto his feet. What horrible situation was he in now?

He shook his head in an attempt to clear his troubled mind before peering intently down into the ravine he was now on the other side of. The creature had made the same fatal mistake he had, and his eyes tracked it as it plunged down into the depths.

Unfortunately for it, its own terrified scream was unable to save it and it soon disappeared into a fine haze which slowly dispersed to reveal... shrubs, dirt, and nothing more.

The heat of the ongoing day didn’t bother him while he scanned the area for the gigantic beast he’d narrowly managed to escape from through a means he did not understand. As the burning sun rose ever higher, he noticed an odd glinting of the light down where he supposed he should have seen some remains.

He wanted to get down there, but it was a straight drop as far as he could see. Something niggled at him, however - the strange events that had taken place the last few times he’d used his voice were not lost on him.

Once more, he filled his lungs.

A few tries later, he skidded out a portal at the bottom of the ravine, sending dust clouds billowing up. When they settled, he could see it.

A rust-coloured gemstone lay there in the dirt.

* * *

The starving lions glanced up in alarm from where they were waiting in the shade of the sprawling acacia tree in time to see their strange cohort return through a blaze of light. Their anxiety eased as it blinked out behind him. He dragged his prey and set it down in the dust amid his pride.

He sat back, for the first time contemplating his own lack of hunger as he watched the others eat.

The pride went on to survive the heat wave, and soon found themselves thriving in an abundant savannah once again.

* * *

The being with the flowing, curling mane who walked the earth on two funny-looking paws continued to visit, and Lion eventually found that he could sense her presence the instant she touched down on the local warp pad. Usually he stayed put, enjoying the day or simply watching the cubs play from wherever he was as he waited for her to make her way to him.

Rarely he felt moved enough to get up and seek her out himself, but today was one of those days. He threw up a portal, leapt through, and landed neatly at the base of the warp pad before she’d even had a chance to step down from it.

Surprise took her features. This was the first time she’d seen his portal, and she was quite taken aback. She rushed over and threw her arms around him.

“How did you do that?” she gushed. “If only you could talk! Oh, you are so _clever!_ Earth’s beautiful creatures never cease to amaze me.”

He pulled away when he’d had enough, and she let go.

More and more, Rose whisked him away. She took him places he’d never been before, places so far removed from his savannah that he could never have imagined them.

A pair of gigantic magenta structures flanking a locked building, out in the dead of the desert. It was heavily obscured by windswept sand, further out in the desert than he had ever traveled before.

Other places included damp swamps, tall canyons, a secret mountain lair. Alien structure after alien structure, relics of a distant past he’d never completely understand...

But now that he was growing aware of a wider, lusher world than what he’d previously known, he’d often go exploring on his own. He spent ever-longer amounts of time away from his pride, and not on purpose.

One day, he returned to find he’d been away for so long that here were new lions, now. New cubs. The old generation had passed in that unwavering, ceaseless march that he would come to grow more and more familiar with.

The sprawling acacia tree was still there, but it had changed too. New branches in new directions, new unfolding leaves-

Although he remained protective and involved with what had become of his pride, he viscerally knew that he no longer truly belonged with them.

* * *

He caught the scent of something intriguing, on something other than air, with something other than his nose.

The tall birds with the snake-necks continued foraging for berries and seeds in the forest floor below as he swung his head away. He couldn’t see what the pull was amid this dense woodland, but it was new and different. It felt like a friend. Perhaps it was Rose!

Prying his eyes from the unaware birds, he trotted off in the direction of this pull.

Leaves crunched and sticks snapped underpaw as his trot turned into more of a canter, then a gallop. He wasn’t exactly familiar with this place but he knew that whatever pull this was, he had to cross this mountain to get to the source of it.

Finally he rounded a rocky outcropping and skidded to a stop. Sprawled before him was a clearing leading down towards a lake, which was bordered on one side by something he’d never seen before.

It was a series of tiny pale cliffs, filled to spilling with water that bubbled and trickled down from the top. It almost reminded him of the structures his old friend had showed him, if not for its asymmetry and rugged nature.

It was interesting too, but it couldn’t distract him from the figure that was reclining against a tree not far from it, across the sparkling blue waters.

The lion had come across a human or two by this point. He knew what they were - creatures like his wonderful two-legged friend, but markedly different in size and the way in which they smelled.

He wasn’t familiar with this type of human, or what it was doing, with its hue similar to his. Its scent on the air was faint but there was something about it that spoke to him, perhaps a quality they shared.

He watched, eyes wide, as it lifted its head to regard him.

* * *

Something unusual in the periphery of her vision caused Connie to glance up from the journal she’d been reading. There was plenty of pink around this picturesque place - the series of natural silica terraces were a pale pink, after all - but to catch sight of some of it moving of its own accord was cause for alarm.

But it was just a pink creature, like a lion, in the distance. The sight confused her. Her first thought was that this poor lion was severely lost. Other than humans, there were very few other mammals on this island. Certainly no lions.

Her second thought reared up from the murky depths of distant time and caused her to jolt up from the tree she was leaning back against.

 _”Lion!?”_ she asked no one in particular, but Lars poked his head around from the other side of the tree anyway.

“Huh?”

Connie put the book in her head and slowly rose to her feet. “Lars,” she said quietly. “I think Lion exists now.”

“Who?”

She pointed. _“Lion.”_

Lars still looked lost as he followed her finger across the lake and laid eyes upon the pink apparition. She could see the realization creep slowly across his face. “ _Lion_ Lion?” He fumbled for words. “What- _how?!”_

“You know how it is.” She shrugged. “You get stuck in a good book and suddenly it’s the nineteenth century.”

Lars glanced around the lakeside with the gently-swaying trees, the way the terraces towered above them. “Huh.” Anxiety plagued his voice. “When did you say this place might explode, again?”

Across the lake, a flash of light enveloped Lion, only for him to reappear right in front of them. They stepped back from the sudden appearance of the hulking animal, Connie wringing her hands in front of her, Lars gasping in surprise.

The portal blinked out behind Lion as he sniffed the air, in which hung a silence broken only by birdsong.

Lars piped up after a long moment, his breath shaky. “Hey, buddy...”

Connie frowned as the feline blinked at them, unresponsive in a way that she could recall was unlike him. Her heart sank with the realization. “Of course. He doesn’t know us yet. That’s still at least a few years away.”

Lars chewed on a lip as Lion finally made the decision to step towards them. Connie thought she could see indecision in his broad features and held a hand out for him. He tentatively leaned forward to sniff it, keeping his eyes on hers.

“This feels, uh, _time-breaky,_ doesn’t it?” asked Lars. “I knew coming to Earth for air wasn’t-“

“It might be okay. It’s not like he can tell anyone about us.” She looked Lion in the eyes. “Right?”

“We should go,” Lars insisted.

“How’d you know how to find us?” Lion allowed Connie to run a shaking hand across his face as she put voice to her thoughts. “ _How_ do you know how to find other pink things!?”

“Well, _we_ figured out how to find each other. And Rose. So...”

She couldn’t help but laugh. “We’ve been around for five millennia but this guy’s been pink maybe five seconds and already he seems like he knows everything!” She threw her arms up in exasperation. She knew firsthand that these powers didn’t come easy. “If only you could tell us what you’ve been through!”

Lion cocked his head at her and his tongue shot out to lick her on the face. She laughed again and threw her arms around his shoulders as tears threatened.

Now that Connie was sobbing gently into his mane, it was Lars’ turn to find himself face-to-face with the big cat. He waved awkwardly. “So... any chance you recognise us?”

Instead of answering, Lion thrust a nose into the guy’s face and sniffed. Lars snorted and pushed him away but the lion was insistent.

Lars too found his face accosted by wet, scratchy tongue. Unable to hold out much longer, he gave up and joined Connie in tearfully hugging the big cat in the warm sunlight.

It was a moment of kindredship that couldn’t last, but while it did, it transcended time and species and brought each of them something they hadn’t had in a while.

A feeling of belonging.

A reminder of home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops. This one ran way longer than I intended. And I accidentally Lion’s perspective. 
> 
> I thought about re-working it, but nah. I also thought about making it its own story or a one-shot, also nah. It is kinda format-breaking, but I don’t care enough about that to not let it still be a part of this little omake series. 
> 
> I also like that this last one is a little different from the others, esp since I really wanted to put a meeting between Lion and Lars & Connie in the main work somehow but I could never figure it out.
> 
> And that’s a wrap on this thing unless I think of something else. Thanks for reading!
> 
> (Now to figure out which WIP I want to devote most of my spare time to now gdfh)


End file.
